The Invisibles
by Distant Tide
Summary: An anthology of short stories rarely seen in the Halo Mythos. ON HIATUS FOR REWRITES.
1. Rox: Face in the Crowd

Fanfiction Disclaimer (Distant Tide):

 **The following story is a fan-based novel created by the user: Distant Tide. The Halo property and franchise belongs to 343 Industries and Microsoft Studios. The franchise was first developed by Bungie, Inc. Distant Tide created _The Invisibles_ for entertainment purposes and does not claim permissibility or ownership of the franchise and its assets in any form.**

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 _Welcome to Distant Tide's The Invisibles, a Halo-inspired anthological short fanfiction series based around characters created by Distant Tide within the Halo Mythos with the purpose of maintaining a decent schedule for storytelling when the personal life becomes too complicated to sustain larger-form fanfiction novels._

 _I hope that through these stories, I can keep entertaining my readers and share my world with my audience even while my University work clutters up my schedule. I would love to hear feedback from anyone who is wishing to share, and when it comes down to it I just want to improve my writing._

 _Please read and review if you can._

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 **["Face in the Crowd"]**

 **[LATE MORNING / / 24 AUGUST 2558]**

 **[Location: PILLAR III SPACE ELEVATOR, Low Orbit, Reach]**

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 **. . .**

It'd been five years since Roxanne had bothered calling that dusty rock below "Home." Back then, it had been lush, green and covered in water. Vibrant but rugged, Reach was where she was born. However, that was a different life entirely. The last time Reach had been her home, aliens set her village ablaze, her parents' bodies lay gunned down on the patio, and alien Jackals were scouring her house for her older brothers. Roxanne hid in the storm cellar hoping they would not smell her.

She waited, two days, for a sign that it was safe to come out. It never arrived; there was gunfire and then silence for hours on end. Sometime later, an Army squad came through her house. They burst down the cellar door and found Roxanne, hungry, freezing, and very scared.

One moment a combat medic was hugging Roxanne as she wrapped her in a warm blanket, then seemingly the next, Roxanne was heading to SPARTAN-III training along with several hundred other children. Now, here she was back again; not on Reach, but floating, living aboard an off-world habitat installed where one of Reach's space elevators once proudly stood. She glanced out the window behind her looking at "home." She caught a glimpse of a lightning bolt dancing through turbulent storm clouds just as a massive hangar door zipped open and the crowd behind Roxanne sparked into wild cheering as the "Saviors of Humanity" marched through those doors into the living habitat's main lobby. Roxanne's eyes snapped back to the crowd all the same and clapped ferociously as if she was concentrated on them the entire time.

Spartans.

In their blue, green, and grey MJOLNIR power armor, they stood over the crowd like superheroes, born from a different crop. Easily seven feet tall or more. Roxanne knew every single one of them, not personally, but by reputation. In addition, more than just the propaganda fed to the tired working souls that called Reach and this orbiting habitat home, but on a career level. Roxanne was just like those superheroes in their titanium exoskeletons and decked out in dozens of weapons and top-of-the-line tech gadgets. These were _no ordinary_ Spartans though; this was _the_ Blue Team. The Master Chief and his childhood companions, legends on the battlefield, Saviors of Humanity, Demons to the Covenant.

Roxanne could distinguish the individual SPARTAN-II operators by his or her armor, their weapons, their quirks, and gimmicks. She went through Spartan training just like them; she studied them specifically as part of her induction to become just like them.

John-117, the Master Chief, marched briskly forward at the head of his four-Spartan fireteam. His armor was iconic, the legendary, original drab-green Mark VI, recognizable anywhere. He didn't pay a single glance to the crowd around them, marching forward without pause.

Kelly-087, John's best friend in training. She was the fastest Spartan alive and her golden fishbowl helmet was a staple of her equipment. A rabbit emblem appeared faint on her breastplate in a place only Roxanne's sharp Spartan eyes could pick out. She seemed to brisk close to the crowd but showed no sign of recognizing them.

Linda-058, the team's sharpshooter. The lens array on her helmet was purpose-built specifically for her, allowing her to see into any visual spectrum with unparalleled battlespace awareness. Roxanne remembered the Office of Naval Intelligence called the helmet ARGUS or something along those lines.

In addition, there was Fredric-104, the highest-ranking member on the team as a Lieutenant in the Navy. He had a reputation among Spartans as a nasty close combat fighter with a deadly pension for blades. He was also the most charitable of the group, and outgoing. He waved at the crowd in a seemingly friendly motion even if you could see nothing past his golden helmet visor.

Roxanne knew more about these SPARTAN-IIs than anyone in the crowd around her did, well, with maybe exception to the ONI officers that flanked the legendary Spartan team on either side, keeping the crowd between themselves and the super soldiers. Roxanne knew how the Office of Naval Intelligence abducted the SPARTAN-IIs at the age of six and conscripted them into a dangerous government project called the SPARTAN-II Program. Many of their friends died in the augmentation process, a process Roxanne also experienced as a SPARTAN-III, though without the dead comrades. No one but Roxanne was privy to that secret because no one in this crowd but Roxanne was a Spartan.

Or rather, she used to be a Spartan. According to the Office of Naval Intelligence anyway. According to her former friends too. Probably.

She decided to leave that life behind when her team leader presented a rogue Smart AI and a cryptic warning that Earth was to become the center of a great tragedy that would shake the galaxy to its core. Now, Roxanne was a skeptic but the original owner of the AI and the signs put forward by the AI painted a dark and terrible picture. Unseen forces were maneuvering in the background of Human space and politics. Therefore, Roxanne ran "home." To the one place, she could feel comfortable while hiding out in preparation for what was likely to be the end times. She was scared she would admit it. At least to herself. She ran because she was scared.

However, this wasn't her home only. Roxanne stared down the Master Chief in particular. Those SPARTAN-IIs, they were never born on Reach, but they grew up there, trained there for most of their childhoods. There wasn't much of a difference when it came down to it. She felt a strange sense of comradery with them, these solemn fighting machines grafted onto the fragile template of toddlers. She'd been through that too, she knew what it was like. However, she also wasn't like them at all. She gave it all up.

The Master Chief's helmet twitched and turned toward the crowd, giving them a glance over. The crowd's cheers and shouts grew more frantic and joyous as they assumed their savior was giving them recognition like rabid fans to a Waypoint celebrity. Roxanne doubted it but she wondered what was passing through the man's head as he skimmed the crowd's with his ghostly-golden visor. She froze when her eyes met that golden visor and it felt like time seemed to slow to a standstill.

She couldn't see his eyes but she imagined seeing her own reflection in that menacing golden glare. Her own fearful-wide eyes staring back at her from across the hangar.

Roxanne's first instinct was to run. The second instinct was to charge the Master Chief and to fight him and his team. The third instinct was to shrink down and hide. She was a fugitive, a rogue Spartan. _Classification: STOLEN GAUNTLET_. If they knew Roxanne was a Spartan, they would certainly gun her down on the spot, or, they'd seize and detain her. She thought back to her armor and weapons buried on Reach's inhospitable surface beneath a bombed-out building. She had no means to fight off such a possibility. She also had no means of escape in this crowded atrium.

All Roxanne could do was stare unblinkingly into the Master Chief's golden visor, hoping he would not recognize her wide-blue eyes. Her golden-blond hair. Her five-foot-nine stature. All the identifiable features present in her Career Service Vitae file, her CSV. The same one every military personnel received. Her mind raced back to thoughts of shrinking herself into nothing. She thought about how he'd recognize her face instantly, how she already looked suspicious, and how her strong like-an-ox build would give her away with how badly it mixed with the youthful, unblemished face of a Spartan who never knew the real cost of war.

Roxanne gave off a quiet, involuntary whimper in fear as the legendary Master Chief made eye contact with her and then turned away, all the same, not paying any mind to the rogue Spartan staring back at him in the crowd. Maybe he saw something else, maybe the glassed surface of Reach behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief but also one of nostalgia and sadness.

Roxanne gave up that life. In many ways, she still missed it. Being a legendary supersoldier and a hero to Humanity even though her name was not to be in the history books like that of Blue Team. She missed her team and all their good times and bad times. She missed that sense of comradery that the Spartans had. What she saw in Blue Team now, total, cool confidence and trust in one another as they marched along in silence. They were a family, and Roxanne had thrown hers away. Roxanne missed her family, not her biological one.

Her Spartan family from SPARTAN-III Delta Company, the one she fought tooth and nail through training with. The one that dragged themselves through the slums of Rio de Janeiro to stop a Sangheili extremist from detonating a portable nuke, the family that wandered through the junkyards of New Phoenix examining what remained of a city wiped clean by a Forerunner superweapon.

She was now just a bystander, another face in the crowd. No one special, no one with a destiny or purpose any longer. She was like smoke in the wind. Unseen, unnoticed, without presence. She was no Master Chief, and certainly not a Spartan to them. It was best she just remained that bystander then. _Another face in the crowd._


	2. Argo: Intervention

_This is the second chapter of The Invisibles. Today's chapter applies to Argo' Varvin, a stranded Sangheili in space after the Battle of High Charity and the Great Schism. This is his introduction to the Universe and a story that dabbles in the spiritual toll that seeing a society collapse brings._

 _Please read and review if possible!_

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 **["Intervention"]**

 **[APPROACHING DEATH / / 18 NOVEMBER 2552]**

 **[Location: HIGH CHARITY DEBRIS FIELD, Dark Orbit, Substance]**

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 **. . .**

The darkened hollow smelled of grease, feces and all manner of dead things. Once ceremonial-indigo in color, the armored walls of a decrypted gunboat were now painted black with ashen paint chips and scorch marks from a quenched flame. It used to be a splendid chamber capable of housing dozens of the Covenant's mightiest warriors at interim of battle, primarily Fleet Security who serviced and deployed the craft on numerous occasions.

To the Humans who fought the Covenant Empire for so long, the small combat vessel called a "Phantom" based on its bulbous hull and ghostly-sounding gravitonic thrusters proved vicious as a medium-tonnage gunship. This particular model once served with distinction; however, it was now nothing but another lifeless wreck adrift in an orbital debris field thousands of kilometers across in the shadow of a blue gas giant called Substance and the massive ringworld that orbited nearby.

Something moved in the shadows of the charred trooper bay; if viewed with the naked eye, most souls would have mistaken the half-dead corpse for another trash heap. Scaly, unnaturally frail, and lying on his side in a mound of metallic garbage, the nude form of an eight-foot-tall reptilian alien rolled over on to its forward-swept knees. Once adjourned in well-maintained maroon combat armor, the creature, belonging to the sapient species of the Sangheili, had forgone his combat harness as he inched closer to what was likely a pitiful demise.

Nude mostly, the frail Sangheili still lay covered in the melted patches of his hexagonally stitched bodysuit. Remnants from a previous fire like the rest of the gunboat, the suit was cooked and seared, what did not melt away became grafted to the alien's skin. Shaking haphazardly, the Sangheili threw off the tatters of the junk pile, once pieces of armor, bodysuit cloth, and any manner of fabric that he could find within the former combat vessel. Aged claw marks tore through the rubbery-soft bodysuit material and dented the armor pieces: a self-inflicted action.

He rose on shaky limbs and slowly arched his back in a manner befitting of an elder far more than a seasoned holy warrior. A dull pop echoed from the alien's contorted spine. The horrors of days past had taken their toll on mind, body, and spirit. In his nude state, the alien's four mandible jaws quivered with hesitation; his eyes glazed over with endless time and his shallow breathing sprayed a low, humid fog into the air.

The Sangheili wrapped his bare arms around his ribcage and marched, slouched forward, wincing slightly with each heavy step. His hands rubbed along his scaly flesh that depressed at the weak but firm grip, instinctively seeking warmth. The skin hung loosely from the alien's form in a manner akin to a starving animal. He stumbled forward, keeping a hazardous eye on the piles of burned and shredded junk that populated the rest of the Phantom's troop bay.

On closer inspection, especially in the low lighting, holographic spray paint splashed into the form of Sangheili hieroglyphics warned of something dangerous, translating into a Human tongue, "Don't Touch." It looked as if the order was still in effect because the paint and piles looked untampered, even after the passage of days or weeks. The piles themselves were of possibly irrelevant stuff: shredded metal and impact cushioning from the walls cropped electrical wiring and loose rebar from the Phantom's architecture. Strangely, goops of oddly scorched bone and biological matter lay among the piles.

One of the armor pieces still latched on to the nude Sangheili, a duty belt, was broadly loosened and thrown over his shoulder like a make-shift satchel bag. The bag came with a magnetically glued hand-held plasma pistol and shallow pockets probably containing spare weapon-grade plasma batteries. The Sangheili tickled the pistol grip as he passed the last trash heap as if to draw upon unseen foes within but gingerly continued past it.

Reaching the door, the Sangheili fell to his knees and stared at the symbol of Reclamation etched into the door frame by means of hand and pocket blade. Taken from the Forerunner glyph system, the symbol had been one of the most important markers in the Covenant's religion, at least, when the Covenant had been whole. The hand-carved recreation of the Reclamation glyph was a circle within another circle with a stem that connected the interior to the exterior shape. An iconic inscription, warped into a fragile mess from a creature long past his own sanity.

It was all this Sangheili had left. More carvings adjourned the other panels of the Phantom troop bay; however, they held little meaning compared to Reclamation. This was what he had spent a lifetime seeking out, he and the rest of the Covenant. Their Great Journey for final salvation led by wayward Prophets promising divine ascendancy through the capture and deployment of the Forerunner gods' timeless artifacts, the Halo Array.

They promise was Godhood, ascension. Yet, the Great Schism happened. His entire species, a founding member of the Covenant Empire, were declared to be blasphemous heretics, to be exterminated, and replaced by the brute-like Jiralhanae. The Sangheili remembered the horror of watching dozens of his brothers-in-arms cut down by interlocking plasma discharge from their once-supposed allies. He remembered the Parasite overwhelming everyone and everything in its path like a demonic flood of flesh and bone descending for a feast on the living.

The last thing the Sangheili remembered before complete isolation was the external cameras on the drifting Phantom displaying Jiralhanae and Sangheili warships firing on one another in space as the Parasite consumed the entirety of High Charity, the Covenant's holy capital and city-station built into the side of a mobile planetoid. Not long after, the entire station under the control of the Parasite jumped to Slipspace, destination unknown. The ensuing radiation took out what was left of the damaged Phantom's external cameras.

He was alone for so long after that, adrift. Left alone with pointless vindication and his paranoid thoughts. He mumbled a silent prayer for salvation from a doomed existence. It was a prayer he thought to himself many times over, desperate for an end to the starvation and wasting away. A fate like this was no end any Sangheili was due, to die without the honor of a battlefield passing.

The Sangheili was broken from his trance-like stupor when something outside the Phantom rocked the boat. The distinctive sound of melting metal start to lance the troop bay's port side.

Even in the darkness, the glow of hot metal was beginning to shine with an amber glow. The glow's intensity quickly warmed the troop bay and ended the Sangheili's shivers as he detected the approach of destiny.

Intervention.

The Sangheili rose on his unstable legs but mustered his wasting health to stand tall. Friend or foe, he would meet this answered prayer with dignity becoming of a Sangheili. He was broken but even in his half-insane state, the proud warrior stayed true to his being. He marched across the hold and drew his plasma pistol. He did not care to notice his weapon battery was at full depletion.

The glow burned into a shape akin to a doorway, cutting into the nanolaminate armor and warming the metal into a near-liquid state. Where the glow traveled, the architecture turned a bright violet. The Sangheili listened close, clenching his claws around the grip of his depleted plasma pistol, holding it close to the waist in a shooter-ready posture.

The specific glow of a plasma torch receded from the wall, along with its hot pink hue. Metallic, hollow impacts thumped against the Phantom shaking the entire gunship's hull under the Sangheili's feet. He stared down the glowing entry point and readied himself.

A solid whirling of noise in rapid thumps echoed through the metal as if something was cutting through. Instead, the cutting stopped abruptly but it did not bring about a pause or a phase.

The wall exploded open with a blinking white light.

Shouts echoed into the troop bay as combat boots pounded onto the deck of the Phantom. Human soldiers drawing their large black, short-cropped rifles decked with flashlights swarmed in and quickly began taking up shooter positions.

One quickly identified the Sangheili's plasma pistol and rushed forward as he yelled, "Gun! Gun!"

The Sangheili attempted to press his finger to the ignition detector on the pistol's handle but found only a quiet beep of fuel loss, he had run on empty. Before he could reach for another battery or clobber the charging Human, the other soldiers took action, pointed their rifles from a distance and repeating the first speaker's warning.

"Gun! Gun! Gun! Gun!"

The closest three Human combatants rushed forward and tackled the alien with their combined weight, a force that in the Sangheili's prime would have done little but push him onto his back foot. In this case, he hit the ground hard, clobbered by his attackers.

A rubber rifle butt found contact with the Sangheili's face, bruising him into a daze and submission. He felt the inert plasma pistol yank from his sloppy, loose grip. A pair of large handcuffs appeared out of nowhere and latched onto the Sangheili's arms, placed on his back as he came into an upright kneeling position by force.

In all this, the once proud Sangheili could only process so little, the blinding light of the Human vessel's interior, the shadows of Human combatants, their distant voices shouting "Clear!" in repetition, and the blinding flashlight beams as they were directed into his eyes.

One of the Humans spoke in a gruff voice on a headset to one of his superiors, "We've cleared the Phantom. One survivor, it's a Split-Jaw. We've also got the presence of Flood residue across the cabin, looked like the Elite tried to set himself on fire and the interior of the ship to kill whatever got onto the vehicle with him. We're going to take him in."

After a silent pause, he turned to the Sangheili and the Humans restraining him. "We got an affirmative, take him aboard."

The Humans dragged the Sangheili toward the doorway, the airlock, and pushed him into the blinding white light. Behind him, he heard the Human commander talking to his subordinates. "Get a thermite charge ready, burn everything inside the Phantom. Make sure to leave nothing but ash. In addition, quarantine the Elite. We'll see what awaits him later."

A couple of Humans responded with a "Roger" and they went to work.

For the Sangheili, he was drifting into unconsciousness. He could only think how bad this salvation had gone. Any chance left at honor redemption or a good death, gone. Humans would do monstrous, despicable, unspeakable, heretical things to him.

Before he passed into twilight, he produced one last coherent thought. This would be the end of Argo 'Varvin, a Sangheili assassin of the once proud Covenant Special Warfare Group.


End file.
